While maintaining your garden should be a team effort, many successful gardens at City Schools follow a model in which a school staff member serves as the garden lead. This person keeps track of tasks that need to be done and delegates jobs to volunteers, students and other staff members. Garden maintenance falls into three categories:
(1) Regular maintenance that needs to be done on a weekly basis. This includes things like watering, weeding, harvesting and planting. These are great projects for student green teams, or garden clubs.
(2) Larger scale projects and improvements. This includes things like spring or fall clean-up, garden build days, infrastructure maintenance, etc. These projects can be a great opportunity to engage community members and volunteers. Note: any permanent infrastructure changes, including the addition of raised beds, fruit tree plantings, or permanent structures must go through an approval process with City Schools. Please see the Getting Permission section of the Designing your Garden page. .
(3) Grounds maintenance around the garden space. Often some space around or between garden beds is maintained by the schools grounds crew who mows the grass. It's important to check in regularly with the grounds crew to ensure that they know what should be mowed and what is part of the garden. Speak with your principal about the best way to do this for your school. If your principal is uncertain contact green@bcps.k12.md.us.
Many of the most popular vegetable crops grow best during the summer months. If your school has summer programming consider keeping your garden active in the summer months, and make a plan for maintenance. The summer garden lead does not need to be the same person as the garden lead during the school year. In fact, some schools turn over the garden to a community or parent volunteer during the summer who has an interest in gardening.
It's also possible to prepare your garden for a period of dormancy in the summer and resume gardening in the fall. Weeds love the warm summer temperatures, however, so it's important not to just walk away. To prepare your garden for summer dormancy, try one of the following:
(1) Remove any spring veggie crops and plant a low maintenance summer cover crop instead.
(2) Remove any spring veggie crops and cover the soil with mulch or plastic to prevent weed growth.
Sources of volunteers for planning, building, and maintaining your garden may include:
Your school’s PTA. Offer parents and community members the opportunity to engage with your garden and help with maintenance over the summer and on weekends.
Master Gardeners. Contact the Farm to Schools team to request a consultation from these trained volunteers via this link.
Your community association. Neighbors may be interested in providing volunteer assistance.
Other potential sources of volunteers include:
Note: if you secure the support of volunteers for a garden build day, one adult with experience in garden building or carpentry should oversee construction.